


champagne kisses

by lethean



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Love Confessions, M/M, Mutual Pining, Pining, Pining Keith (Voltron), Pining Shiro (Voltron), Post-Season/Series 08
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-31
Updated: 2018-12-31
Packaged: 2019-10-01 16:24:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,074
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17247503
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lethean/pseuds/lethean
Summary: “I was afraid you’d left,” Shiro said, when Keith kept quiet, and he moved closer.Keith didn’t turn to look, eyes fastened on the stars, but he could feel the warmth that radiated off Shiro, could hear his footsteps.“Afraid?” Keith asked, the word choice odd considering their lack of, well, any kind of relationship since before the last battle against Honerva.“Yes,” Shiro said firmly. “I’m relieved you’re still here.”Keith and Shiro talk for the first time in years, at a New Years Eve party.





	champagne kisses

Remnants of Christmas lingered in the corners of the room, but mostly the blue and silver decorations welcomed the New Year celebrations into their midst. Two dozen balloons that exclaimed ‘Happy New Year’ were fastened to one wall, glitter and party hats covered every surface available, and the ones that weren’t available were instead covered with plates of appetizers and glasses of champagne. Throngs of people, some he knew, most he didn’t, pushed and shoved as they greeted friends and acquaintances, too happy to care that there were others around them. 

Keith wasn’t drunk, but he wanted to be.

He hadn’t been back to Earth for years; the last time he’d seen a human had been Matt—and whether he could be considered human was uncertain—and that had been brief and so long ago he had almost forgotten the terrible new haircut. Matt still sported it, and Keith felt compelled to laugh each time he saw his fuzzy head pop out from the crowd. Alternatively, run away in sympathetic mortification. 

Mostly, Keith just felt like he didn’t fit in. Like a piece of broken glass that didn’t belong with the others, and would be left out when the vase was glued back together, forgotten on the counter and then thrown out with the trash. 

There had been dinner—informal, thankfully, and no one had asked him to talk, much—and he couldn’t deny it was good to be back, to see the others again after so long. But there was one missing person, still, and somehow that no longer surprised Keith. 

Whatever bond Keith and Shiro had, once upon a time, had long since faded away. The string had been cut. 

“What are you doing, moping into your champagne?” Lance asked, popping up out of nowhere.

“I’m not moping,” Keith snapped, defensiveness rising on instinct.   

_ “Definitely  _ moping,” Lance said, nodding to himself, and wrapped an arm around Keith’s shoulders. “It’s New Year’s Eve, man! Wouldn’t hurt to smile a little.”

Keith sighed. 

“Tough year?” Lance asked, small wrinkle between his eyebrows the only thing that betrayed concern. And wasn’t that ridiculous. Lance showing concern for Keith, in any way.

Everything had changed so fundamentally from the beginning that sometimes, Keith couldn’t keep up.

“I guess you could say that,” he said, once the acceptable length of silence after a question had passed by a large margin.

“Well, y’know, ‘new year, new possibilities,’ and all that,” Lance said, gaze soft and fastened across the room where Allura stood, white curls shining like stars.

“Things okay with you? And Allura?” Keith asked, a sudden drop in his stomach at the thought of Lance so heartbroken once again.

Lance shook his head a little and laughed. “Nah, everything’s fine. Taking it one step at a time.”

For a moment they both stood there, Lance’s arm loosely around Keith’s neck, in companionable silence. Keith held his half-full glass of champagne, still, and stared down at the bubbles rising slowly to the surface. The moon was full and almost bursting on the night sky, framed by the tall window next to them, and Keith’s heart ached to be out among the stars once more. 

There was nothing for him on earth.

“Y’know, Shiro and Curtis got divorced a few months back,” Lance said, eventually.

He didn’t look at Keith, but his words felt deliberate. Like he meant more than he said.

“I know. Pidge told me.”

“You’re not gonna talk to him?”

Keith took a deep, steadying breath, careful not to rattle the edges of his heart.

“Shiro and I haven’t talked in a long time.”

Lance looked at him then, placed his hand on Keith’s shoulder, expression serious.

“You don’t think it’s about time, in that case?”

Curse Lance and his surprisingly high emotional intelligence. Keith didn’t meet his gaze, glanced down at his glass and his hands. Old and new scars littered the surface of his skin, and the dichotomy between that and the champagne glass would have made him laugh, if he hadn’t felt so fragile. Like one more word would make the stitches holding him together break.

“Bit hard to talk to him when he isn’t even here,” Keith said, voice tense and throat tenser. 

Lance frowned, first at Keith, then at the door.

“He was supposed to come,” Lance muttered. “I told him you’d be here and he jumped at the opportunity..”

Keith’s heart didn’t know how to react to that information. He swallowed, throat dry, tried to keep the pieces of himself he’d carefully put together again in place. The room felt suddenly too small, like he was shoved into a box with four dozen other people and he couldn’t breathe.

“Oh, wait, there he is!” Lance exclaimed suddenly, and Keith’s head snapped up. “Hey, man!”

Shiro stood in the doorway, hand braced against the wooden frame, hair turned silver in the low light, face already turning towards Lance’s voice, and panic rose sharply within Keith.

“I need some air,” he said and broke out of Lance’s grasp before Lance could stop him.

“Hey, wait! Keith!” 

Keith shouldered his way past the people until he spilled out through the French doors onto the veranda, and cool night air swallowed him. He grasped the stone railing tightly to ground himself and took deep breath after deep breath until his heart stopped thundering in his chest. 

He didn’t want to see Shiro.

He wanted to see Shiro, desperately.

Keith had hoped years in space, far away, doing good, would let him move on.

It hadn’t. It only made the longing worse. 

The ‘almosts’ and the ‘could have beens’ had haunted him. When he’d heard Shiro had divorced his husband, those thoughts intensified. Maybe Keith had a chance, now, the thoughts whispered to him. But Shiro had only ever seen Keith as a friend, a brother, the rational part of his brain said.

No point in confessing, just to have your hopes crushed. 

The doors behind Keith opened, the sounds of people talking and laughing breaking the sweet silence momentarily. Then they closed again. He hadn’t heard anyone come out, and gathered they’d changed their mind when they saw he was already there. Maybe the dark cloud hanging over his head was visible to others, too.

“Keith,” a voice said, and it grabbed him by the heart and squeezed.

He hadn’t talked to Shiro in a long time, but his voice was exactly as he remembered it.

“I was afraid you’d left,” Shiro said, when Keith kept quiet, and he moved closer.

Keith didn’t turn to look, eyes fastened on the stars, but he could feel the warmth that radiated off Shiro, could hear his footsteps.

“Afraid?” Keith asked, the word choice odd considering their lack of, well, any kind of relationship since before the last battle against Honerva.

“Yes,” Shiro said firmly. “I’m relieved you’re still here.”

Keith fought against the urge that told him to turn around, to look at whatever expression had to be on Shiro’s face when his voice sounded so exhausted.

“Why?” 

“I wanted to talk to you.”

Keith closed his eyes tightly. Nothing Lance could have said would have prepared him for that, hearing those words, but he cursed him regardless. Cursed him for leaving him alone with Shiro. Their past relationship lay like an abyss between them, a thin thread all that connected them, and if Shiro tugged at the thread one more time, Keith would fall.

He cursed himself for not knowing whether he wanted to fall or not.

Shiro stepped up beside him, leaned on the railing, close enough that Keith only had to reach a few inches to touch him. He dared a quick glance, and confirmed his suspicion. There were dark shadows beneath his eyes, visible even in the darkness, and he looked almost bent in on himself, like the weight of the world rested on his shoulders.

That might have been true, once, but Shiro had left that life behind. 

He should have been well-rested, happy. Keith owed him that much, had  _ wanted  _ that for him, more than any selfish desire he kept within his own heart. But if Shiro ended up unhappy again anyway, perhaps Keith could have been more selfish.

“I heard from Matt, a few months ago,” Shiro said, speaking so suddenly it broke the silence like a gunshot. “A little before Curtis and I … well. He’d been to see you.”

Shiro paused, studied his hands. The wedding ring was gone—Keith suppressed the jolt of elation that went through him at that—but there was a band of light skin just where it had been, and Shiro rubbed at it.

“And I hadn’t realized before, but when he said that, God, I was so jealous of him.” Shiro let out a small chuckle. “I couldn’t believe I let things come to this. Jealous of Matt, because he got to see you.”

Shiro cleared his throat.

“Curtis left me. But all I could think about was you.”

Keith’s heart was breaking again.

He was surprised there was enough left of it to break. 

“I made a mistake,” Shiro continued and Keith wanted to tell him to stop speaking but the words couldn’t make it past the lump in his throat. “I’m not asking you to forgive me. I won’t ask anything of you. But I’m so, so sorry, Keith.”

A million questions burned in Keith’s mind, jumbled together until he didn’t know which was which, wasn’t sure he wanted to. All he knew was that Shiro held every part of his heart, still, and that old, permanent love won over the cold rationality that told him Shiro deserved to be rejected, or even worse, that what Shiro was confessing to was less than what Keith wanted it to be. 

“What mistake?” Keith asked, eventually, barely a whisper and filled with all the hope he could muster.

“I made a lot of mistakes, Keith,” Shiro said. “Most of them involved you. I treated you less like my best friend than my colleague. I tried to kill you, scarred you for life, and never talked to you about it. I pushed you away. I married someone else.”

Shiro’s hand brushed against Keith’s, but withdrew.

“I never told you I loved you.”

Keith let out all the breath in his lungs.

“Past tense?”

“Present tense.”

Oh.

Cold rationality had nothing to say to that.

“Okay.”

“Just okay?”

Keith licked his lips, turned a fraction in Shiro’s direction. Shiro looked at him, eyes almost burning, but they lingered further down on Keith’s face than his eyes which—he was thankful it was too dark for his blush to be noticed. 

“What do you want from me?” he asked, almost helplessly. 

“I want whatever you want.”

“Just tell me what  _ you  _ want, Shiro.”

“At one point, I know you would have given me the universe, if I asked. I don’t know if that’s still the case, but I don’t want to force you—”

“Shiro.”

Shiro sighed. “I want to be with you.”

Keith’s heart stuttered over a beat.

“Kosmo would like that,” Keith mused. The wolf had probably missed Shiro just as much as Keith had.

“Would you?”

Keith smiled a little. “Yeah. I’d like that, too.”

“Okay. Okay.” Shiro turned away a little, but not so much Keith couldn’t see the grin spreading on his face.

A sudden burst of noise from inside interrupted Keith’s train of thought, and he whipped around. The people inside were cheering, and then—fireworks in all the colors of the rainbow exploded across the night sky.

“It’s midnight,” he said, realization dawning as flowers unfolded and collapsed one after the other above them. “It’s beautiful.”

“Are you going to finish that?” Shiro asked, motioning towards Keith’s glass.

“No, why?” He’d forgotten he even brought it out with him.

“I think I might need it.” 

Shiro tilted his head back and drained the glass. Then he stepped closer, pressed a hand to Keith’s cheek, thumb brushing against the scar, and kissed him.

Keith froze for a moment, but Shiro’s lips were warm and he tasted like champagne and happiness, and Keith melted into the kiss. Even years of imagining exactly this couldn’t have prepared him, and he felt light-headed when they separated.

“Happy New Year, Keith,” Shiro said, giddy smile on his face.

Maybe Earth wasn’t so bad after all, Keith thought, and pulled Shiro in for another kiss.

**Author's Note:**

> and then they kiss some more
> 
> what do you mean they didn't manage to pull Allura out of wherever she ended up after she saved all of the alternate realities. definitely happened.
> 
> Happy New Year to everyone! I'm on [twitter](https://twitter.com/delethean), too!


End file.
